GM: Interview With A Ghost

[The Brown Lady]

She was thoroughly enjoying her stay at Hogwarts castle, meeting all those other soul imprints and just mingling with all the students. However, The Brown Lady felt she had let her attention to the actual classes slide horribly, yet she couldn't exactly bring herself to doing something that demanded hard work. Therefore she had decided to take part in the interview with the reporter woman she had heard was residing at the same place for the time being.

As she floated down the corridor, she wondered just what kind of questions to expect. Would she have to reveal a lot about her human past? Would it be possible to avoid the subject altogether? She'd be too happy if it was indeed the case, but then again she was here to reveal her nature, wasn't she? Confusion crept through her, and she was glad to have reached the east wall of the SPS classroom. In contrast to her usual behaviour, she swiveled to the left and stepped right past the cold stone.

An annoyingly sweet and extremely fake smile greeted her, barely helping the horrible sight the woman was. Violent colours were battling each other for domination in the appearance, and her voice sounded like vile bubblegum. Okay, so that was a weird definition and definitely made no sense, but it was a fact and the Lady liked to stick with those. A cascade of exclamations and questions washed over her before she could as much as opne her mouth, and she sat back for on an abandoned table, waiting for the women to finish her rant.

"Hello. While I must say I have not heard of you before, you may indeed have heard of me. I am The Brown Lady, as people say, and for some reason I quite like that name. Obviously I do not mind answering your questions, for else I would not have bothered to come here and attend your little interview session, would I?"

She flashed a true Slytherin smirk at the woman, and hey, there definitely was some silver and green blood flowing through her veins - ahem, there had been such blood flowing through them before she had had to leave life behind. Shaking her head mutely she let the thoughts swirl around her mind for a while before pushing them aside. Only then did she turn her gaze back to the Skeeter woman and continued talking in her quiet, but attention-demanding voice.

"What is it like, being a ghost. Now that is a nice question, my dear. I, for one, would say it is one of the worst things that might happen to a soul after dying. You see, there is a reason as to why you become a ghost when others just pass away and abandon Earth altogether, and that reason is barely ever pleasant. Because of this, I doubt anybody would find being a ghost a pleasure in itself. Now that I live like this, I am however quite fond of my second existence. I spend many a days reading a good book, listening to the best music from any of the years I lived in - in whatever state -, learning new things."

Her voice drifted off once more, wanting to leave an impression on the other. Yes, she was a ghost, but that didn't mean she couldn't be intellectual and inspiring. The expression of the reporter, though, had her change her mind. This one was probably into the juicy stuff.

"Of course the most interesting part about this is getting to hear all the gossip. When you're grey, pearly, and not exactly of the same substance as the humans you are around, they easily tend to forget your presence. Every other time they simply chatter away, allowing me access to their deepest secrets and all that. Can you imagine the fun of it? Oh, the news I could surely tell you from what I heard just in the last twentyfour hours, you wouldn't believe it! But I'm getting distracted, this is about us ghosts after all..."

The Lady smiled in a way amazingly similar to Skeeter when she'd entered the room, and observed the woman's features like a stalker observes his prey, waiting for the right moment to strike. She was the kind of person who'd go after every bit of gossip, she'd swear she was, and the bait had been successfully laid out. If things went as planned, she'd avoided the most critical question without even drawing attention to the fact, instead hooking the newspaper woman on Hogwarts happenings that were not necessarily true. The Lady barely kept herself from sneering - she loved taunting those darn living souls, making them pay for all they'd had her suffer...

[The Brown Lady]

The Lady noticed the other's gaze sliding past her shoulder, focusing on something, but definitely not on her. Another laugh was held back, for she loved those times when her blurry self made onlookers uneasy and trying to divert their attention. One of the many tricks a ghost could make use of to haunt the ones still granted life, and whose life didn't become incredibly better with a little insanity to spice it up?

Then again, this lady - if you could call her that - in front of her probably lived for gossip alone, if her reaction to mentioning it was any hint. She definitely wanted something new and exciting, she seemed to actually glow from the inside at the g-word and the Lady could have sworn that if she started spilling something now, the reporter would drink in her every word. As a matter of fact, she pondered, why not try it out?

"Ah, I guess I could offer one tiny little story. I'm not sure you've heard the rumor before, but it's told that Headmistress Elfie sent the purple hippo on a weird and slightly pointless mission. People keep whispering about it being supposed to find NOOBS and recruit them onto the HE...rumor has it she plans for them to be her future minions, some kind of mental confusion apparently because she never had a NOOB time herself, as opposed to every other living - and dead - soul attending."

Satisfaction tingled inside her somewhere as she continued observing the reaction she was able to draw. It was as if she'd offered a piece of bloody meat to a raging Manticore, an innocent girl to a Dementor, a talent-free student to the legendary Snape - absolutely fascinating. Emotions seemed to wash over Skeeter's face without control, but perhaps she was a bit too excited about this herself. It had after all been a while since she'd last had this kind of fun...which brought her to the next set of questions.

"But now we shall get back to the subject of this interview: me. Or, yeah, ghosts in general but obviously no other being had the decency to delight you with its presence, so you shall be limited to my opinion for now. Well, well - my life. I must say, the first existence wasn't quite what I would have asked for, had I been offered the chance. Surely you understand the disadvantages that come with being locked up in your house by your husband?"

Now she really became the stalker keeping an incredibly close eye on the prey. She doubted she'd ever told anybody about this, and yes she was aware it would be in newspapers all over the world if the woman decided to modify the whole thing a bit or anything, but honestly, the emotions this revelation was sure to draw were just too delicious. For a long second, the Lady wondered whether the reporter would manage to guess the answer to the next question. In the end, she decided to wait for that instead of plainly answering herself.

"As I said, there's most often a reason for someone to stay around after death..."